I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I'm curious as to why you've been bringing over various interwiki templates from Wikipedia. I haven't really noticed any of them being used on any pages here (though maybe I haven't looked at the right ones), and usually, templates aren't brought over to here from Wikipedia until there's a need for them. (This isn't any sort of policy, it's just the way things seem to work.) I don't mean to discourage you, I'm just genuinely curious if there was a reason I'm missing (for all I know, it could be "because you feel like it" or because you intend to use them later, and that's fine). —LrdChaos 16:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

So sorry about the great delay. About the time you posted that, I was preparing to travel for an extended period, one of the perils of being self-employed. I'd recast the system during the next several weeks in between engineering tasks, and {{Interwikitmp-grp}} and files of related names were left hanging unfinished. There are only so many hours in a day, alas! Your compadre, JeffQ left a note on my wikipedia talk, which I barely managed to find on a quick trip home.

I'm afraid in retrospect that wasn't the politest answer I've ever given. Sincere apologies Jeff, RL intruding on Wiki-work I'm afraid. I plead being very under the gun, having to fly back out right away, and most all the discussion of this scheme was by email. Unbeknownst to me, my email here was turned off. I was answering that occasionally by satelite phone link to laptop. In any event, I'm surprised the project survived as well as it did, and wasn't deleted on Wikipedia. Wiktionary and Wikisource seems to have deleted it almost as well as you guys, but that's No big deal either. I'm sure it doesn't make my delete log and contribs here look too good though! <G>

This project under construction ...
Pardon our appearance whist we remodel,
pull the engine, and change the tires.

The individual 'sisters' can be dropped from a link, or indeed, cross linked to a different name.

It's key template (above--I took the liberty of reimporting that in the improved version. Like the trashed up stuff, this current pass still has a lot of convienience links, of which the tools templates, frankly, you don't have here already. They're readily available on Meta or Wikipedia or the Commons, so either you all don't talk about templates and categories over here, or you've got simiar efforts that are probably not as optimized. Either that or you have a different name hung on them.

I'm surprised (and gratified) the system survived intact at all--it's key piece (above) went under a TfD onslaught the day I left town in September, and survived despite my not being able to stick up for it. The Wikipedia/Meta/Commons stub versions were much farther developed and I just didn't have the time to export updates before leaving to all the sisters. In fact, I decided I was foolish to try an update all nine in development, so you only got the earliest versions before refinements. And a small variety of support templates, best classed as typing aids. So apologies, what you had were bits and pieces of something mostly dysfunctional, and at best ugly.

And certainly an apology for the tardy response. I should have perhaps checked my 'mail' here sooner, but I just recently had the block of time necessary to work out the bugs in the system, and alas, I'm not the best template programmer that ever lived, so the key contributions that set me forth again came from a couple of others. I think the easiest way to answer the intent of your question is this defense of it earlier this month. That outlines pretty well what the goals and beliefs are behind my tackling such a large effort. I make my living thinking outside the box, and I guess this is some more of the same. In the meantime, my heads due on a pillow. Regards // FrankB 09:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC) (xpost notice on User talk:LrdChaos and User_talk:Jeffq).

I recommend you to stop posting any new template and give the community explanation. Generally it is not reasonable way to continue posting materials similar with something now listed on WQ:VFD without any explanation. --Aphaia 11:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what you're talking about, but I'll see what's going on on that link. I've been up all night, so can use a break. Template:I2Thanks for the heads up. FYI--I'm just trying to put a communication system in place and deliver a few goodies along the way. Template:I2See W:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing... it's a very rough stab, but the thrust of the concept should be clear. Template:I2If it's not, please tell me what isn't. Once I get a stub system in place I need to polish that up and make it a Meta-project, present it to the M:Communication committee for cross language adoption, and all that. Just getting all the eye's dotted and tees crossed has taken some serious time investment. Thanks! // FrankB 13:22, 9 February 2007 (UTC) (Xpost to user talk:Aphaia)

Thank you for making my point, Fabartus. You can spend hours composing invective, but you don't see the need to spend that time doing basic interoperability testing and documentation (let alone the comprehensive regression testing that any experienced software engineer should know is essential) before you foist your "helpful" template infrastructure on a project. You also make repeated claims of your material being "widely used", but every time I check your work on Wikipedia, it has little use or participation from anyone else. (Word to the not-at-all-willfully-foolish: if your work isn't accepted on en:Wikipedia, you have zero chance selling it here. en:Wikipedians are far more prepared to performed un-natural selection on evolving competing templates.)

That the interoperability testing is being interfered with by your overly quick responses is Exactly the point.

One cannot write documentation, nor discuss fine points until the parameters of the problem, and the likely scope of needs are explored.

How does regression testing come into this? How do utility templates like indent, lts, la, cat, etc. challenge your infrastructure.

I addressed the participation sufficiently, I think, there ARE a few things to pin down and juggle, in case you hadn't noticed. Try porting a few yourself. // FrankB 17:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

As an apparent amateur cultural anthropologist, you'll have to pardon the "local tribe" for being unimpressed by your efforts. But your work is very obviously not designed to help newcomers, who can't — and shouldn't — be expected to learn the use of all these templates when the whole philosophy of wikis is to make editing simple! (Anyone who uses an indentation template to separate sentences in his talk-page posts [1] clearly has an inadequate grasp of the concept of "simple".)

I called you "naive" not about your programming skills, although your tendency to work on projects XP-style rather than as an mature software engineer belies your focus on technical sophistication rather than usability. (No offense intended toward Extreme Programmers; in general, the methodology is quite valuable. XPers also know how to establish their environments before deploying them.) I meant "naive" in your interaction with the culture and communities that you expect to adopt your oh-so-clever mechanisms.

The famously eccentric mathematician Paul Erdős had great difficulty interacting with ordinary mortals, but no one questioned his amazing accomplishments. Complete your project on Wikipedia and demonstrate widespread use (not by claims but with proper, ordinary, working links to examples of its uses there), and we may reconsider. Understand, however, that most of Wikiquote work is done by anonymous editors and infrequent registered users, who will not sit still for any discussion of basic template use, let alone stuff like "separate your sentences with {{I2}} instead of ordinary spaces". You may find that we eventually respect you as an Erdős without being able to make use of your work. Such is the nature of life in a local tribe.

And one other note: anyone who attempts to do interproject work damn well better understand each community. Each project must deal with its own community, and the people participating in these communities vary incredibly between projects. A sure way to get your work rejected is to loftily assert that you "cannot be expected to be familiar with all the local politics", as if it's somehow beneath you or not worth your time. (This is yet another example of your failure to understand that a wiki project is not just about its content, but just as much about the people who create that content.) You might want to talk a bit more to Aphaia about this, as she is our Ambassador to Wikimedia and is familiar with the problems of working with many different projects. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 15:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice, but I'm quite familiar with the tribal nature of the different communities. HAS YOURS Adequately considered that their demands for premature discussions is more than a bit juvenile? Take your seven day limit which someone here is violating... very narrow mindset, AND DEMANDING and assumes every working man has the same involvement and ample time to respond. Do you have a courtesy notification by email in place? [2] My point is simple. You are reacting to something which is being widely used... prematurely. I don't give a hill of beans whether some newcomer knows how to incorporate the main template, as that's the perview of the documentation your interference is delaying... though the newest version (W:template:interwikitmp-grp not yet distributed) overcomes that usage need for the newcomer, I suspect. It certainly will in conjunction with W:template:Interwikitmp-grp/doc when the next pass of updates is completed. But why you are all picking on small parts is beyond me. If you test the Indent behavior (BTW- This is a pretty good example of how it helps clarity in talks) in talks, by the way, it doesn't break the HTML by introducing an end div, so wiki-markup wrapping continues without getting disturbed. Helps a great deal in clear presentations by numbering or alpha prefixed paragraphing presentations, when one is italicising, when one doesn't need wide space indentation for a sub-point, etcetera. Take a look at W:template talk:indent head to head comparisons and the blocked 'Indent family usage'. Template:I2Sorry that I don't see the need to have an collaborator jarring my elbow whilst this was being developed, but I have had a fair bit of help from others, though admittedly most of that is by email. If you take a look at the 'Links here' on the various sisters, you'll see a fair smattering of talk discussions, so it's hardly been 'secretive or unknown', nor limited solely to wikipedia talk. Patrick over at Meta has been assisting here and there as well as David Kernow on the commons-- some just have sense to stay out of the way long enough to let things develop. // FrankB 17:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh great tribal leader <g>... Then help me figure out why my email isn't getting this generated email with it's coding to unlock the email facility here. Haven't had this issue on any of the other sisters. I'm suspecting an email filter on my mail client may be trapping it, and re-filing it, but need to know what the email title line might look like to see if I can check for that possible problem. That is however unlikely... no filter I have would be marking something as 'read', and the message isn't showing up anywhere by that test. Can't CC-by email with this blocked either. Please inform me by direct email, or my WP talk when you have some kind of response. I've emailed Brion Vibber on this, but don't know whether this is part of his duties. Thanks. // FrankB 17:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

As a tribal leader ("great" is probably pushing it too far), I believe I can help you here. Based on a test I just completed of one of my auxiliary accounts, your should receive the following:

TO:[your email address]SUBJECT: Wikiquote e-mail address confirmation
Someone, probably you from IP address [your IP address], has registered an
account "Fabartus" with this e-mail address on Wikiquote.
To confirm that this account really does belong to you and activate
e-mail features on Wikiquote, open this link in your browser:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:Confirmemail/[32 hex digits]
If this is *not* you, don't follow the link. This confirmation code
will expire at [hh:mm, d mmmm yyyy].

(Apparently, the developers forgot to include a "(UTC)" to make clear that this is the timezone meant.) Let me know if you need more information. (I am also posting this to your WP email address, as requested.) ~ Jeff Q(talk) 05:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a second time. BTW- no hard feelings, however things turn out. I begrudge the lost time some, as I have not reached back into open edits before Alaia's heads up yet and it's now 3 am once again <head shaking>, but that's wiki's for you. Some other matters came up complicating time spent. Sometimes you have to scratch people's backs, even when it diverts you from your tasking. See ya! // FrankB 08:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC) {w/xpost)